CASEMENT'S CAPTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 July 1916, Page 5

CASEMENT'S CAPTURE.

A MEMORABLE ARREST. Xho great invasion "with a fleet of battle cruisers and an army of 40,000 men" —as was confidently predicted —is as complete a liaseo as the landing of Napper Tandy at Rutland and of Wolfe Tone in Lough Swilly in 1708. Banna (Strand, where Sir Roger Casement and his companions were captured is a magnificent stretith of six miles of iirm sand ending in the north of Ballyheigc under the shelter of Kerry Head and in the south at Harrow Harbor, which separates it from the island of Kenit. It is an ideal place, hut it is the worst of all possible landing places, and Ohe communications inland arc quite impossible for a considerable distance, - Here, toward the dawn of Good Friday, a peasant, thriftily intent on the picking up of such wreckage or flotsam as the tide might have left behind, came on a boat of strange build, empty and half afloat, rolling to and fro with the waves. The four oars, or paddles, were adrift, too, and tlicae he secured,

after pulling the boat up on the stranaV There was also a sheathed dagger iy' ing in tlie botton of the boat. This was evidently something quite out of tin: common, and the peasant, scenting mischief, very wisely made bis way to tlio police station at Ardfert, some miles off .and reported the matter to the «er« geant in charge. SEARCH AXD ARREST. Two policemen, with the sergeant at their head, found three revolvers, with a. good store of ammunition, three, (hisli lamps, maps, n cipher code, and the green and gold Hag of the Sinn Fein republic—a (lag "made in Germany," but destined never to float over Dublin Castle. The search for the fugitives was at once started —no easy matter among trackless sand dunes. Descriptions had been circulated of Sir Roger Casement among other persons 'wanted,' but tho sergeant seems to have had no premonition of the nature of his capture when finally he came on a figure half concealed among the brambles and blackthorn iu an old Irish "rath," or circular fort, a couple of miles away. A LITTLE BLUSTER.' When challenged and secured Case* inent tried a little bluster about his right to sleep in an old rath if so dis' posed, but the sergeant countered with. • the Defence of the Realm Act, and the prisoner made no further resistance. He gave the name/of Richard Morton, with an address in England, and went quietly to the barracks. In the Hue and Cry Casement is, of course, depicted with, & black beard, and the prisoner was closeshaven, but when the photograph was closely compared with the face there wast little room for doubt. Roger Casement was taken, and the little white-washed orderly room of Ardfert barracks took its place in history. Shortly after another constable came in with another prisoner. He chatted quite freely with his captors as to hi" experiences. At any rate, ho was not a Kerry man. And so the curtain drops on the local story. Casement and his recruit were soon on the road to Tralee, and Killarney, and Kerry will sea them no more.